2016 Short Film Award Winners

The RPS is delighted to be working with Watershed and DepicT! in offering an award for the best cinematography amongst its shortlisted films. We feel it’s important to recognise this swiftly changing and influential medium by helping and supporting up and coming film makers.

2016 RPS Cinematography Award Winner

'Living' by Ben Mankin and Will Baldy (above):

In a run-down doctor's waiting room… What lies beneath?

The winning film was selected by:

Dick Pope – Oscar® Nominated Cinematographer
Cinematographer
Dick Pope’s career includes ten features he shot for Director Mike Leigh, including Secrets and Lies, Vera Drake, and Mr Turner for which he was awarded the Prix Vulcaine for the Technical Artist at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival and also nominated for Academy, BAFTA, BSC, ASC and British Independent Film Awards. His latest project is Legend about the notorious Kray Brothers, written and directed by Brian Helgeland.

"Both Will and I work in the Film and TV industry, we met while studying a few years back. We really liked each others approach to film-making and soon started making Short films, Promos and Tourism commercials. We are focusing on drama and striving to make great shorts and features."

About the film makers:

Ben:

"I have been working as a Camera loader for the last couple of years and directing short films in my down time between work. I'm working towards being a director full time but I’m enjoying being around talented people on large budget TV Dramas and Feature films, I think that you can learn a lot this way.

I made the film ‘Living' for the Depict 2016 competition. It came from a concept that a friend came up with a few years back which had been in my mind for a while, so when I saw the 90 second competition I had to do it.

The main inspiration came from a Swedish director that I’m very found of called Roy Anderson. I thought that it would be interesting to do a film in a similar style and draw on the themes that you can see in his films. I have always been interested in films that look at human emotion so I chose to do one that looked at this in a simple and comedic way. I wanted to create a stripped down, slightly depressing world within the film to showcase the boxes that people live in and to give contrast to the humour."

Will:

"As a Cinematographer relationships with directors are very important, and I pride the relationship I have with Ben. Having a Director who’s also your friend is a fantastic ground to build any collaboration upon.

When we decided to enter the Depict competition Ben was very clear with the inspirations from Roy Anderson so I started research into the style, techniques and colours he used. We carefully choose the colours on screen, from the wall paper down to the actors shoes all to fit within the themes of the short. Lighting the set itself was a challenge due to the flat, even look Ben wanted, and keeping the soft roll off into shadows, 3D animation was used to build and visualise the lighting of the set before construction started. This level of pre-vis meant the entire crew, were on the same page from an early stage of production."

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